In the dominant position, whites are almost always racially comfortable
and thus have developed unchallenged expectations to remain so
24.
Whites have not had to build tolerance for racial discomfort and thus
when racial discomfort arises, whites typically respond as if something
is “wrong,” and blame the person or event that triggered the discomfort
(usually a person of color). This blame results in a socially-sanctioned
array of counter-moves against the perceived source of the discomfort,
including: penalization; retaliation; isolation; ostracization; and
refusal to continue engagement. White insistence on racial comfort
ensures that racism will not be faced. This insistence also functions to
punish those who break white codes of comfort. Whites often confuse
comfort with safety and state that we don’t feel safe when what we
really mean is that we don’t feel comfortable. This trivializes our
history of brutality towards people of color and perverts the reality of
that history. Because we don’t think complexly about racism, we don’t
ask ourselves what safety means from a position of societal dominance,
or the impact on people of color, given our history, for whites to
complain about our safety when we are merely talking about racism.